The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is threatening us with hellfire and damnation. But its conclusions are suspect. Rather than investigating all possible causes of climate change, it’s in the business of pointing a finger at humanity.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the marine biologist who led the IPCC’s Ocean chapter, is a full-blown environmental activist. He recently wrote a politicized foreword to a WWF brochure, and has a long history of employment with both the WWF and Greenpeace.

The upcoming Working Group 2 report wasn’t thoroughly scrutinized by hundreds of external reviewers. Those people saw only early versions of the report. Unpublished research findings were still being incorporated months later.

If the IPCC was a scientific body, the science section of its upcoming report would be summarized by scientists and that would be the end of the matter. Instead, the science summary will be the battleground at a 4-day political gathering.

The IPCC’s response to the leak of three data sticks is typical of that organization. It expects us to accept its version of reality at face value. Its statement provides no opportunity for the public to draw its own conclusions.

Thanks to a whistleblower, draft versions of most chapters of the IPCC’s upcoming report are now in the public domain. Among the new revelations: the IPCC has learned nothing from the Himalayan glacier debacle.

IPCC officials are telling Working Group 2 authors about scientific papers that haven’t been written yet. These papers will appear in a special edition of a journal guest-edited by an activist scientist.

A Dutch professor has examined a draft of the upcoming IPCC report. He says it has been written by people who assume things that haven’t yet been proven, are selective about what material they consider, and reach decisions by a show of hands.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper has published a fawning article about IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. But the article is pure propaganda. It was written by the Natural Resources Defense Council – a green lobby group that fancies itself “the Earth’s best defense.”

Most chapters in Working Group 1 of the 2007 Climate Bible contained at least one scientist who is affiliated with professional climate lobbyists. In one instance, four of the lead authors were tainted in this manner.

The World Wildlife Fund says the charge that scientists linked to its organization have infiltrated the IPCC is ‘ludicrous.’ I suppose it’s a total coincidence that more than 2/3rds of the IPCC report’s chapters included at least one WWF-affiliated individual.

Between 2004 and 2008 the World Wildlife Fund recruited 130 “leading climate scientists mostly, but not exclusively, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” to help it heighten the public’s sense of urgency.

We’re supposed to trust the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s conclusions because it relies on peer-reviewed scientific literature. But many of the people who run scientific journals also write IPCC reports. This is a circular, incestuous process.

When hundreds of Canadian scientists – and 12 science bodies – joined a World Wildlife Fund ad campaign they undermined their own authority. They became politically-motivated actors in a political discussion.

The scientific community expects us to trust its judgment on the question of whether global warming is the fault of human beings. But its response to the Chris Landsea affair demonstrates that that judgment is impaired.

The credibility of the IPCC has long been in tatters. There have been multiple calls for the resignation of its chairman. Rather than addressing this state of affairs, the head of the IPCC thinks corporate entities should change their ways – because we live in a world in which “reputation and public opinion are extremely important.”

Activists, politicians, and journalists love to play the ‘science says’ game when talking about global warming. But scientific facts are one thing. How best to respond to those facts is a completely different discussion – in which we all deserve a voice.

You gotta love the UN. The 31-member IPCC bureau includes representatives from undemocratic and unsavoury countries such as Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Malaysia, Madagascar and the Maldives. Soon, these countries may be deciding the fate of billions of UN-administered climate change funds.

An opinion piece in Scientific America alleges that, over the long term, a great deal of scientific research turns out not to be true. Independent replication of research findings is apparently far less common than we think.

Last year a committee investigating the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told it to pull up its socks and follow its own rules. This week, the IPCC decided to jettison an important rule instead.

A new 1,000-page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report appears to ignore both nuclear power and shale gas – even though both these energy sources emit far less CO2 than does coal. This suggests the IPCC’s top priority isn’t emissions reduction after all.

The IPCC has released a 26-page summary of a new report 3 weeks ahead of the 1,000-page full document. This is an example of how the IPCC manipulates media coverage. Journalists can’t compare the summary to the real thing.

Written by a senior Australian scientist, The Climate Caper explores some of the reasons why official IPCC science has become so pervasive. For one thing, it’s affiliated with huge government agencies employing large numbers of civil servant scientists.

When a cycling group told its members they were going to hear from a Nobel laureate, it didn’t explain that climate modeler Philip Duffy’s contribution to a decade-old IPCC report was limited – and tainted by conflict-of-interest.

Each IPCC report includes a chapter that evaluates climate models. Is this written by disinterested parties who take a cold, hard look at the strengths & weaknesses of these analytical tools? Nope. It’s authored by people whose livelihoods depend on climate models.

Perhaps the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change doesn’t regard activist scientists as damaged goods because neither the National Academy of Sciences nor the American Association for the Advancement of Science does, either.

Jennifer Morgan was recently recruited to help prepare the upcoming edition of the climate bible. Rather than being one of the world’s finest scientific minds she is a professional activist – as in chief climate change spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund.

New Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines declare that blogs “are not acceptable sources of information for IPCC Reports.” Yet these same guidelines say nothing about advocacy literature published by groups such as Greenpeace.

A year ago a group of volunteers from 12 countries struck a blow for truth-in-advertising. Our audit revealed that 1 in 3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report references are to non-peer-reviewed literature. For years we’ve been told the climate bible relies exclusively on peer-reviewed research.

In 2008, the United Nations Environment Programme published a map suggesting there’d be 50 million climate refugees by 2010. When a writer called attention to this failed prediction recently, the map disappeared.

Before the IPCC was even founded, the Worldwatch Institute had already declared that global warming was caused by fossil fuels. Surely that makes the IPCC chairman’s decision to fraternize with this activist organization a bit awkward.

Rajendra Pachauri does not display the aloof, dispassionate demeanour traditionally evoked by the term “scientist.” Instead, he repeatedly lends the good name of the scientific body he chairs to activist endeavours.

How does someone who hasn’t yet earned their doctorate get nominated by their own government for IPCC duty multiple times? How does the IPCC, which claims to be comprised of the world’s top scientists, repeatedly select this person to fill senior roles?

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change thinks you and your children should feel chilly in the winter and too hot in the summer. He also thinks it’s his business to decide what amount of meat consumption is healthy and desirable.

Two activist scientists, both committed to the climate change fight, have starkly different views of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One says it’s the most “rigorous scientific process” in which he has been involved. The other says it isn’t good science, but “lowest-common-denominator-science.”

President Obama’s science advisor says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change bases its conclusions on source material that has been vetted in excruciating detail. According to IPCC insiders, this is bunk.

According to insiders, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change selects its authors via a secretive process. Nothing prevents scientists belonging to certain schools-of-thought from dominating the reports that get produced.

The IPCC documents most likely to be read by outsiders – the Summaries for Policymakers – are not scientific statements at all. Rather, they are the result of a messy, arduous political negotiation that pits scientists against politicians.

According to scientists who’ve helped write its reports, the IPCC is not a scientific body first and foremost. Rather, its primary purpose is to lay the necessary groundwork so that an international climate change treaty can be negotiated.

IPCC insiders say non-peer-reviewed literature is essential and unavoidable when they write one of the world’s most important reports. Yet chairman Pachauri has, for years, insisted only peer-reviewed material gets used. Why haven’t scientific organizations set the record straight?

A news story tells us we should believe a report because a “Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist” is associated with it. But the Nobel turns out to be the same Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore – and the report’s findings are highly improbable.